My boss is back at work, albeit on "light duties". This actually means that we throw her out if she looks unwell. This is a good arrangement, and there's an element of reciprocity in that she threw me out - well, told me to go home - when I was unwell a couple of weeks ago. I finally finished my somewhat overdue piece of contract work by the Wednesday of my week off work, and was therefore free to go away for two night B&B with second youngest son for a day's walking in the North Yorks Moors.
My new kitchen units and stuff are being delivered next week, and second son is installing the whole lot the following week for me. So life isn't all bad.But some bits are less wonderful than they could be. Eldest son and his partner have separated, and until they sort out their affairs (fortunately this is a largely civilised separation) he is living here. Quite how he gets his 6' 2" frame into my boxroom is a mystery. It's always sad to see one's kids troubled, and the fact that he's 24 and earns more than me doesn't stop me fretting over him.
My car finally went in for its first service in three years after I found steel
wire poking out of one of the front tyres. I gather they aren't meant to do that. However, once the mechanic started to check out the suspension, the dodgy boot lock and the dripping oil, I faced a bill of £600 to make it fully healthy again - and then I discovered that getting an additional key (I only got one when I bought the car) will cost me £100. I console myself by saying that £600 on repairs averages out at £200 a year, which isn't too bad for a W reg car, really.But the real bummer is the end of my affair with my scrabble playing friend, who found himself unable to continue our friendship while hoping for a reopening of his affair with a married woman. The quotation above is from her as she commented sourly on his continuing friendship with his ex-wife. Clearly she wasn't able to live up to her own dictum, since she punctuated our time together with angst-ridden phone calls. I gather than she is now (for the umpteenth time) about to leave her husband to make my ex-lover the happiest of men. I wish him well and hope that she does...
Work is a happy antidote to trauma to the heart, and longer usual working days mean that I have managed to catch up on most of my paperwork, update the college website and make significant inroads into my teaching programme. Students are starting to drift in and out again after their summer breaks, though term doesn't star
t till mid September, and it's nice to have them around once in a while. I suppose I ought to be worried that I went into the kitchen last week and heard three of them discussing me as "the college rottweiler"? However, I had a more encouraging encounter with someone with whom I had a pretty strong run-in at one of our summer conferences. He came in to talk about the possibility of postgrad research, and I spent about an hour chatting with him about it. When he left, he said he'd found my direct and challenging approach very stimulating, and please could he come back another time to carry on the conversation.
So this bank holiday weekend, I'm not thrashing around under a pile of unfinished work, and I have no romantic interest to occupy my time. What is a girl to do? Open a bottle of the best chilled Chardonnay, tuck into caviar and sour cream blinis, and watch West Wing episodes back to back snuggled up in the warm embrace of an elderly teddy bear.
